When the BBC cut the Apollo 8 coverage, the Queen Mum rang to complain

Legendary broadcaster James Burke provided the commentary to some of the most extraordinary technological events of the 20th century. As his iconic Connections science series returns to TV, he looks back on his record at predicting the future

- Etan Smallman

IF WE ARE to listen to James Burke, he's nothing more than a "television journalist" who writes "second-rate books", is no "better or worse than most people" at predicting the future and is "way past his sell-by date". I don't believe a word of it, of course.

Not for nothing has the 86-year-old broadcasting titan been named a "favourite author" by Bill Gates, name-checked by The Human League in their 1980 song The Black Hit of Space ("Get James Burke on the case," they sang) and hailed as "one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world" by The Washington Post.

Burke famously hosted the BBC's flagship science magazine programme Tomorrow's World (demonstrating the video recorder and anti-shark swimming bag) before fronting the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969 the Corporation's first ever all-night broadcast. Then, in 1978, he went on to write and present Connections, which was sold to more than 50 countries and achieved the highest audience documentaries in the history of the US PBS network.

for It was during this series that he recorded what is widely applauded as "the best-timed shot in television history". Explaining the connection between the invention of the thermos flask and space travel, he delivered his piece to camera: "If you release those two gases into a confined space with a hole at the other end of it and mix them as you do so, and then, set light to them, you get... that."

Burke then pointed into the distance - precisely a second before a Nasa spacecraft took to the heavens carrying the Voyager 2 craft. The sequence now goes viral at regular intervals, much to Burke's bemusement.